"Have you murdered anybody?" said Mrs Woodburn, with intense scorn. "Have you robbed anybody? If you have, I can understand all this stuff. He is the very man to mimic, on the contrary. I'd like to let you see him as he was on that famous occasion when he delivered his opinions on art in Lucilla's drawing-room. Look here," said the mimic, putting one hand behind an imaginary coat tail, and with the other holding up a visionary drawing to the light; but this was more than her audience could bear. "I think you must have vowed to drive me crazy," cried the exasperated brother. "Put aside for once that confounded vanity of yours--as if a man had always leisure to look at your playing the fool." While he spoke in this unusual way, he got up, as was natural, and took one or two steps across the narrow space which was shut in by those luxuriant heaps of clematis; and Mrs Woodburn, for her part, withdrew her chair out of his way in equal heat and indignation. "You have always the leisure to play the fool yourselves, you men," she said. "Vanity, indeed! as if it were not simply to show you that one can laugh at him without being stricken with thunder. But leave that if you like. You know quite well if you married Lucilla Marjoribanks that there would be no more about it. There _could_ be no more about it. Why, all Grange Lane would be in a sort of way pledged to you. I don't mean to say _I_ am attached to Lucilla, but you used to be, or to give yourself out for being. You flirted with her dreadfully in the winter, I remember, when those terrible Woodburns were here," she continued, with a shiver. "If you married Lucilla and got into Parliament, you might laugh at all the archdeacons in the world." "It is very easy for a woman to talk," said the reluctant wooer again. "I can tell you something it is not easy to do," cried his sister. "It is frightfully hard for a woman to stand by and see a set of men making a mess of things, and not to dare to say a word till all is spoiled. What is this Archdeacon, I would like to know, or what could he say? If you only would have the least courage, and look him in the face, he would be disabled. As if no one had ever heard of mistaken identity before? And in the meantime go and see Lucilla, and get her consent. I can't do that for you; but I could do a great deal of the rest, if you would only have a little pluck and not give in like this." "A _little_ pluck, by George!" cried the unfortunate man, and he threw himself down again upon his chair. "I am not in love with Lucilla Marjoribanks, and I don't want to marry her," he added doggedly, and sat beating a tune with his fingers on the table, with but a poorly-assumed air of indifference. As for Mrs Woodburn, she regarded him with a look of contempt.